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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Pope Benedict XVI’s “First Convert”

The story of how a New York Jew wrestled with Christ and became Catholic

Groucho
Marx once said, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have a guy
like me as a member.”

So began my witness testimony at the Easter Vigil on April 7,
2007, when my wife Barbara and I entered the Catholic Church. For a New York
Jew, who’d detested the name “Jesus” for as long as he could remember, to be
standing before a packed congregation at Sacred Heart Church in Prescott,
Arizona, having to recount in three minutes how he got there—well, you can
imagine what a surreal a moment that
was.

Yet now, when instead of three minutes I have three thousand
words, plus six years as a Catholic, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and
the election of Pope Francis for perspective, the task is, if anything, even
more daunting. But Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, asked
me to give it a shot, so here goes.

On April 2, 2005, there came the news of the death of Pope John
Paul II. I’d always admired the pope for his courage in confronting the horrors
of communism, and for aligning with President Reagan and Prime Minister
Thatcher in a united front that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Yet as
a spiritual leader he meant nothing to me.

Nevertheless, Barbara and I found ourselves becoming involved in
the events and the funeral as they unfolded on television. Even the typically
skewed commercial coverage couldn’t disguise the tributes from all corners of
the globe, and the love for the pope and grief at losing him from Catholics and
people of every faith. At some point in the two weeks following, Barbara—a
long-lapsed Protestant who’d never lost her regard for Christianity—turned to
me and said, “You’ve got to get religion, Roger. You’ve been drifting way too
long.”

Early on the morning of April 19, I left on a business trip, first
taking the commuter flight from Prescott, our home since 2001, to the Sky
Harbor Airport in Phoenix. There was a wait before my next flight to the west
coast, so I stopped for coffee, and soon after I arrived at the gate, the white
smoke appeared over the roof of the Sistine Chapel on the television monitor.
Sipping my cappuccino, I watched with a large group of travelers, interested—as
a news hound mostly—in who’d been chosen. From my casual observation, however,
quite a few in the crowd were Catholics, and far more invested in the outcome
than I.

When the announcement was made that Cardinal Ratzinger had been
elected, people around me seemed to register either shock or joy.